Late last month, Singapore’s Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew released a book called Hard Truths To Keep Singapore Going, a compilation of 16 interviews that he gave to a team of Straits Times journalists during 2008-2009. Most of the book is in Q&A format with Lee answering questions about the formation, sustainability and future of Singapore, with a supposed mandate to educate young Singaporeans about the vulnerability of the tiny city-state. In India, a book of interviews to government-regulated media is unlikely to gain much traction. But such is the status of the iconic creator of modern Singapore that the book was hard to find the day after its release. Maybe, the fact that Lee also answers questions about his personal life – which is considered unusual – added to the book’s appeal, especially since many of the younger generation view him as a distant, sometimes “mythical”, figure.
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